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Through a USDA grant, CAESER is leading a four-part survey project to identify barriers in implementing voluntary conservation practices on farms and to determine which USDA-NRCS educational materials best convey the importance and effectiveness of conservation practices.
CAESER is assisting the West Tennessee River Basin Authority in assessing the impact of stream restoration projects in West Tennessee. The goal is to determine the ecological benefits of stream restoration and the heightened potential for groundwater recharge through storm water retention.
CAESER has been conducting water recharge research at the Pinecrest Conference and Retreat Center in Fayette County for the past 15 years.
Wellhead protection means protecting the area surrounding public drinking supply wells, and in turn, protecting drinking water supplies.
What do people in Shelby County actually know about our water resources? We conducted a statistically valid, representative survey to gauge residents’ knowledge, opinions and habits in order to better educate the diverse population of our area.
On May 9, 2011, the Mid-South’s floodwaters reached a record-breaking level of 47.8 feet. Ten days prior to the peak flood level, CAESER had predicted the flood inundation extent and identified the properties likely to flood.
CAESER assisted TDEC for nearly 10 years, helping them to migrate their legacy data into GIS. The TDEC Divisions that CAESER worked with were water supply, water pollution control, superfund, geology, natural areas, and state parks.
CAESER developed and implemented a mobile application for Shelby County Public Works to visually inspect and collect data for 160 miles of streams.
With areas of the city lacking safe and navigable sidewalks, many wheelchair-bound Memphians were often forced to brave vehicle traffic by traveling on city streets. The City of Memphis contracted CAESER to map all sidewalks, pedestrian crossings, and ramps throughout the city.
The City of Memphis’ storm water infrastructure was digitized from over 100,000 scanned engineering drawings that were first geo-located by CAESER in one of our largest data migration efforts.
In 2004, CAESER began discussions with the Shelby County Office of Preparedness who managed our local Urban Area Security Initiative on how GIS would vastly improve the planning for, response to and recovery from a disaster that could hit our area.
In a massive mobile data collection effort spanning two years, CAESER mapped every street sign in the City of Memphis—more than 150,000 in total. Teams of students were sent out each day to drive the streets of Memphis, collecting this information using custom scripts in GIS developed by CAESER.
A major threat to the Memphis aquifer is contamination. Though the Memphis aquifer is protected mostly by a thick overlying clay unit (aquitard), there are breaches in this clay that offer connectivity to the shallow aquifer.
After receiving a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for development of the Mid-South Regional Greenprint, the Shelby County Office of Sustainability approached CAESER to provide technical support throughout the project.
Mapping water levels in the shallow aquifer has helped us identify where water of poorer quality is bypassing the protective clay layer that overlies our primary drinking water aquifer.
CAESER partnered with Innovate Memphis (previously named the Mayor’s Innovation Delivery Team, MIDT) to assist with mapping and analysis for their Neighborhood Economic Vitality group.
The Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) study was designed to establish the baseline existing canopy, set a tree canopy goal and identify priority planting areas for increasing the tree canopy coverage for the region. CAESER partnered with the Wolf River Conservancy to perform an UTC assessment for Shelby County and the municipalities of Munford and Atoka in Tipton County, Tennessee.
Recognizing the grave health implications of using mercury, the Ecuadorian government is looking to convert the Nambija mine into an open-pit mine that would eliminate the use of mercury and increase gold production yield by 200%.
CAESER is partnering on a USDA grant with the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, University of Tennessee at Martin, Austin Peay State University and Middle Tennessee State University to focus on the long-term availability of water for agricultural production with projections to 2050.